Hi! I'm Heather Macrae Stringer
Founder and Head of Brand at Tula Blue
I make the jewelry I could not find.
The problem was my own jewelry
I have always been hard on my things. I am active. I am a mom of three boys, and I like to move through my days fast. I am not about to slow down to baby a bracelet.
For years, everything I loved asked me to take it off. Before the water, before the sand. Before the gym. Definitely before one of my boys could pull on it. So my favorite pieces sat in a drawer while I went and lived my life, and the ones I did wear turned green or came apart.
I knew there had to be something better
I wanted jewelry that could come with me and hold up. We had spent seven years living in Hawaii, where I first started making jewelry, though back then it was all metal. The whole time, I kept coming back to the Polynesian bone carving necklaces strung on thick rope. I wanted something like that, but more feminine.
So when I picked the work back up in 2014, I spent the better part of a year experimenting with materials. When I finally found the right nautical-grade twine, the kind built to take the sun and the salt and the water, I knew I had it.
Twelve years of it
That was almost twelve years ago. Finding the twine was one thing. Turning it into rope was another. My husband and I spent months working out how to spin it, and we landed on the hand-drill method we still use today. That rope took over everything.
I built this brand by hand. And in many ways, I built the category around it.
I come at all of it as a numbers person. I studied economics at UT, made and sold my first earrings out of a gift shop in my family's Austin restaurant, and I still run Tula Blue on spreadsheets my dad taught me to love.
Today, nearly 20 women make every piece across two Texas workshops, our Island Workshop in Corpus Christi and the Tula Treehouse in Austin..
If you want the longer version of these twelve years, read our Rope Story.
Along the way
Our work has been featured in Forbes, Shondaland, Scuba Diving Magazine, Practical Travel Gear, and Scubaverse.
We are an official PADI partner, and you can find Tula Blue at Title Nine and in shops around the country. Over the years, we have given back more than $50,000 to the causes we care about.
I am still a little surprised by all of it, and grateful for every bit.
Why I still do it
A couple of years ago I had a health scare, an injury two weeks before a scheduled surgery, and a stretch where I felt defeated and lost my motivation for a while. But I came out the other side happier and healthier than I have felt in decades. The whole story is here. → link to my personal health blog.
I have never been more excited about Tula Blue than I am right now. I love this business. I love our product. I love the moment someone puts a piece on and forgets to take it off, the way it becomes part of a life without asking for any fuss. That was the idea from the beginning, and I feel like I am just getting started.
When you are ready to find your piece, start here.
Off the clock
When I am not at a workshop, you can find me with my three boys and our fur baby Willow, back in Austin now, close to family, on the lake and the trails. Tula means balance in Sanskrit. It is the thing I am always reaching for and never quite holding, and I have made my peace with that.
With love,
Heather Macrae Stringer | Founder and Head of Brand at Tula Blue